The New York Times posted an article yesterday in which William Grimes recalls a series of 1963 LPs (that’s “long-playing records,” for the digital generation) from Calliope Records featuring authors reading from their own work. Included was John Updike, who reads his short story, “Lifeguard.”

Now, Grimes reports, the series is being reissued on two CDs and downloadable audio files as “Calliope Author Readings.” According to Amazon.com, Updike is included in “Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Vol. 2,” along with Bernard Malamud, James Jones, and Nelson Algren—the latter reading excerpts from “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

The Times article, “Hearing Genuine Voices of Midcentury Fiction” is more than a new-product notice. Grimes covers the full story behind the initial recordings and weighs in on the impact of hearing authors read their own works.

With so many of the authors now dead, Grimes says, “The readings arrive like errant postcards delivered decades after the fact. The effect can be eerie. Updike, tiptoeing his way through the intricate syntax of ‘Lifeguard’ from his short story collection Pigeon Feathers, sounds impossibly youthful and fey. It takes an effort to recall that the owner of the voice died in 2009.”